Saturday, May 13, 2017

Obama says Russians did no tampering in US election after early September 2016 when he told Putin to ‘cut it out.’ Despite saying no Russian interference took place after his warning to Putin, Obama invited media to keep questions about the election alive: “I'm going to let all the political pundits in this town have a long discussion about what happened in the election”-Politico, 12/16/2016

“What I was concerned about in particular was making sure [the DNC
hack] wasn't compounded by potential hacking that could hamper vote
counting, affect the actual election process itself,” the president said
at his end-of-year press conference.

Multiple media outlets have reported that U.S. intelligence officials
have concluded that Putin was directly involved in his government’s
efforts to meddle in last month’s election.

Obama on Friday would not directly confirm Putin’s involvement in the
cyberattacks but implied that such an action could only have happened
with the Russian strong man’s say-so. It was the closest the president
has come to fingering Putin directly for the attacks.

“We have said and I will confirm that this happened at the highest
levels of the Russian government,” Obama said. “And I will let you make
that determination as to whether there are high-level Russian officials
who go off rogue and decide to tamper with the U.S. election process
without Vladimir Putin knowing about it.”

Obama said his administration actively sought to avoid politicizing
the issue of Russian hacking from the White House, leaving it as a
campaign issue for President-elect Donald Trump and his opponent,
Hillary Clinton, to address. To offer any commentary beyond simply
alerting the public that it had happened would have been interpreted as a
partisan attack, Obama said.

“I wanted to make sure everybody understood we were playing this
thing straight. That we weren't trying to advantage one side or another
but what we were trying to do is let people know that this had taken
place,” he said. “Part of the goal here was to make sure we did not do
the work of the leakers for them by raising more and more questions
about the integrity of the election right before the election was taking
place at a time when the president-elect himself was racing questions
about the integrity of the election.”

Trump has thus far been unwilling to concede the assessment of all 17
federal intelligence agencies that Russia is to blame for the wave of
politically targeted cyberattacks. He has taken particular exception to
the leaked assessment of the CIA that the Kremlin launched those attacks
specifically to aid Trump in winning the White House.

Minutes before Obama took the podium on Friday, a U.S. official confirmed that the FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence agreed with the CIA’s conclusion.

The president-elect and his surrogates have suggested that the CIA
assessment could have been leaked to The Washington Post by the White
House or some other Democrat and may have been politically motivated to
delegitimize Trump’s candidacy. Trump has complained loudly and
regularly this week on Twitter about the issue’s resurgence, and his
surrogates have objected strenuously in media appearances to any
suggestion that the attacks had any impact on the election or that they
were carried out by Russia.

A spokesman for Russia’s foreign ministry said Thursday that the U.S.
intelligence community’s assessment of Russian culpability was
“laughable nonsense.” The Kremlin has regularly denied any involvement
and has challenged the U.S. to present evidence proving Russia’s guilt.
Obama said Friday that “we will provide evidence that we can safely
provide” but added thatthe proprietary nature of cybersecurity
operations means thatmuch of the intelligence will remain classified.

Last week, the Obama administration ordered
the intelligence community to issue a comprehensive report on election
hacking before the president leaves office on Jan. 20. The White House
has vowed to declassify as much of that report as it can, but warned
that much of it will stay private.

When the intelligence community initially released its assessment
pointing the finger at Russia for the cyberattacks, White House Press
Secretary Josh Earnest said Obama would retaliate against the Russian
government but would not specify whether such a response had already
been carried out or what it was or would be.

The president himself reiterated that sentiment on Friday, suggesting
that some U.S. retaliations would be felt only by the Russian
government and would be by design not perceptible to the general public.

“Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others
not to do this to us because we can do stuff to you. But it is also
important for us to do that in a thoughtful methodical way. Some of it
we do publicly. Some of it we will do in a way that they know but not
everybody will,” he said. “So at a point in time where we've taken
certain actions that we can divulge publicly, we will do so. There are
times when the message will be directly received by the Russians and not
publicized.”"